Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

A searing tribute of sisterhood and family, love and profound loss from the acclaimed author of The World According to Fannie Davis.

In Love, Rita, Bridgett M. Davis tells the story of her beloved older sister, a vivacious woman who in leaving home to attend Fisk University and then becoming a car test driver, an amateur belly dancer, an MBA, and later a popular special ed teacher, modeled for her younger sister Bridgett how to live boldly before her own life was tragically cut short by lupus when she was only forty-four. A brave and beautiful homage that both celebrates the special, complex bond of sisterhood yet also reveals what it is to live, and die, as a Black woman in America.

This moving memoir, full of joy and heartbreak, family history and American history, uses Rita's life as a lens to examine the persistent effects of racism in the lives of Black women--and the men they love; it is essential reading for fans of Jesmyn Ward, Kiese Laymon, James McBride, Linda Villarosa, and Tressie McMillan Cottom.